


Guidance

by colorcoded



Category: Brother Bear (2003)
Genre: Coming of Age, Gen, Pre-Canon, Slice of Life, dealing with death, sibling relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:27:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27547573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colorcoded/pseuds/colorcoded
Summary: Sitka receives his totem while still dealing with the loss of his parents.The people gathered broke into cheers, none as enthusiastic as Denahi and Kenai in the front row who had gotten to their feet and were bouncing up and down as they cheered. Sitka flashed a broad, cocky grin at the crowd, but inside he felt crestfallen. He'd already started considering how he could live up to his totem, and he had immediately hit a wall: Guided by... guidance? What in the world wasthatsupposed to mean? It didn't even make sense.
Relationships: Sitka & Denahi & Kenai, Sitka & Tanana
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16
Collections: 2020 Disney Animated Movie Exchange (DAM Exchange)





	Guidance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/gifts).



> The movie is quite vague about the ages of these characters so I just assumed that people get their totem when they're about 15 or so, and Sitka is about 10 years older than Kenai and 7 years older than Denahi, but I also left it pretty vague.

Sitka wasn't sure when he had become a parent—not quite. His parents had gone on a hunting trip, leaving him, as always, to take care of his brothers. And then... they had never come back. First, they were simply "late"—possibly held up by that big storm that had rolled in three days after they had left. Then they were "missing"—two and then three weeks had passed, much, much longer than any hunting trip they had ever had. By that time, some of the older villagers had begun to help out, dropping by every day to check on the three brothers and make sure they'd eaten, inviting Denahi and Kenai to play with their young children, and asking the three of them to help out with some of the work they had—anything to keep the three boys' minds off of their missing parents. And then, finally, reluctantly, they were "dead." Tanana had had the unenviable task of approaching Sitka and asking if he would like her to light the funeral fires, to guide their spirits if they were indeed wandering.

Sitka hadn't wanted to give up, not yet, but the thought that his parents' spirits _might_ be wandering all alone in the wilderness, without friends or family to return to was too grim, so he agreed. It would be a while before Denahi and Kenai understood—they were young and used to their parents going away for long periods of time. They sometimes wondered aloud when Ana and Ata were coming back, but in the next instant, they would be gleefully revelling in how much more fun it was having Sitka around anyway. Every day was like a wild adventure.

Denahi was the first one who noticed. He was older, and whenever Sitka resolved Denahi and Kenai's squabbles in a way that Denahi didn't like, Sitka could almost see him mentally tally it away to bring up again when Ana and Ata returned, so that he could appeal the decision. One night, after they had eaten, Denahi was sitting on the hides that Sitka had laid out for sleeping. The younger boy was very still and silent in the dark of the hut. "They're not coming back, are they?" he said finally in a low, sullen voice.

Sitka didn't know what to say, so he said the truth: "I haven't given up on them yet." Maybe he was just deluding himself in keeping that hope alive. The alternative was too hard to face, though.

Him? Raise his brothers alone? While his parents had taught him bits and pieces where they could—a dozen skills that he had practiced at their side—he just wasn't _ready._ There was just no way that he could be to Denahi and Kenai what Ana and Ata had been to him. They were so much older, more knowledgable, more experienced—together, the two of them could handle anything. How was Sitka supposed to fill their shoes?

Denahi lay down to sleep, covering himself from head to toe in his furs without saying a word to Sitka. Sitka sat in the darkness with him for a few minutes in silence before deciding to go out to find Kenai and bring him inside to sleep.

It took a while to find Kenai. Ever since the boy had started walking, he could _really_ walk. If you lost sight of him for even a few minutes, he could be deep inside a thicket, ankle deep in the river by the village, climbing up a tree, or in any of the many places that he had distinctly been told _not_ to go.

Luckily, Kenai wasn't in any danger when Sitka finally found him in the forest. The boy was intently watching a beaver as it wandered around the forest floor, turning over fallen trees and branches to inspect them and sometimes pausing from its gnawing of the bark to shoot Kenai a curious and cautious stare.

If Denahi was morose and withdrawn and painfully aware of their parents' absence, Kenai was thankfully the opposite: cheerful, carefree, heedless. "Look, Sitka!" Kenai shouted, pointing at the beaver. The beaver grabbed a bundle of branches and quickly slipped away through the forest toward the river. "Aw, it's gone." The boy stood up as if to follow, but Sitka grabbed his arm.

"C'mon, Kenai, let's head back. It's time to sleep."

"But I'm not tired," Kenai whined.

 _Well, I am,_ Sitka thought wearily. He couldn't sleep until he was sure Kenai was sleeping, though, since that was the only way to guarantee Kenai wouldn't get himself neck-deep in trouble. Sitka sure hoped he hadn't been quite as much of a pain for his parents when he had been Kenai's age. "If you're so awake, then why don't you make like that beaver and collect some branches from over there?" he suggested, to give Kenai something physical to do that would hopefully tire him out. "Gather anything that's close, and stay where I can see you," he reminded.

Kenai eagerly complied, running out to the grove of trees in front of their hut and digging around in piles of leaves for any fallen branches or twigs.

"And don't bring back anything too big!" Sitka added when he saw Kenai running back on his stumpy legs, his arms wrapped around a branch three times as long as he was tall, the fanning tips dragging along the earth behind him.

If anything, the physical exercise seemed to be invigorating Kenai rather than tiring him out. Eventually, after Kenai had replenished the wood pile outside their hut, he seemed to be satisfied enough with his work that he agreed to at least go inside and lay down on his bed. Whether that would mean he would sleep, though, was a different matter entirely. It only took a few minutes of Kenai's merry babbling and tossing and turning for Denahi to bolt upright and loudly complain, "Kenai, stop rolling around! I'm trying to _sleep."_

Sitka pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on. "Here, switch sides with me," Sitka told Denahi, rearranging the furs so that Denahi and Kenai's beds were located on opposite sides, separated by Sitka's.

"Sitka, can you tell us a story?" Kenai asked.

Sitka let out a deep sigh. Stories weren't exactly his specialty. He knew a few stories, but not enough to be entertaining for long, and he was awful at making new ones up. Kenai didn't mind the same ones being told over and over, but Denahi did. "How about a song?" Sitka suggested wearily. He began to sing, one of Ana's songs, a slow, soft lullaby about the moon crossing the sky, looking down on a lake, a mountain, and a field of flowers.

In the third verse, miraculously, he could feel Kenai's body relax and begin to sink into the soft furs underneath him. To Sitka's left, Denahi was curled up, also lulled to sleep by the familiar lullaby. Soon the air in the hut was filled with the quiet sounds of sleeping and finally Sitka closed his own weary eyes.

* * *

Two months after Tanana had presided over a funeral for Sitka's parents, she presided over his manhood ceremony. Sitka sat waiting for Tanana to reveal his totem as the sun slipped toward the horizon. Sitka had always thought his parents would be in the crowd behind him—his father had promised to cheer really loud and be generally embarrassing throughout.

"Sitka, this last year has been a hard one, no doubt," Tanana said. "Some people have to grow up faster than others, and by stepping up to your responsibilities toward your brothers, I reckon you are already halfway to manhood." She reached down behind her to take a carefully-wrapped bundle in her hands. "Your totem will guide you the rest of the way." She held out her hands so that he could see the small figure she unwrapped. It was larger than Sitka expected, the wings extending from the sides of the figure adding extra bulk. "Your totem is the eagle—representing guidance," she said, draping the totem around his neck. Sitka turned the stone carving over in his hands for a moment, taking in the carved eyes, the point of its beak, before Tanana held out her hands for him to grab and pulled him to his feet.

"Let guidance guide your actions, Sitka," she said as she led him up to the handprint wall, "and one day, you will place your mark on this wall beside our ancestors." She raised his hand to show it off to the crowd.

The people gathered broke into cheers, none as enthusiastic as Denahi and Kenai in the front row who had gotten to their feet and were bouncing up and down as they cheered.

Sitka flashed a broad, cocky grin at the crowd, but inside he felt crestfallen. He'd already started considering how he could live up to his totem, and he had immediately hit a wall: Guided by... guidance? What in the world was _that_ supposed to mean? It didn't even make sense.

Now that his totem had been revealed, Sitka realized he had been expecting something... else—something a bit more concrete, something that would give him more direction in his new role as oldest in his family. He knew he had to guide—that was obvious—but the thing that eluded him most about that was the _how_ part. If his parents were still here, he would have loved to ask them how they had raised him and Denahi and Kenai, what they kept in mind when they were faced with challenges. Maybe they would have said that it was always important to be patient; maybe they would have said it was important to be loving. He was hoping his totem would have given him an answer like that when his parents could not, not something so vague.

Sitka hid his disappointment during the festivities, but the next day, he went to Tanana's hut to bring up his misgivings privately. "I was really hoping that I would get some guidance," he explained. "I mean—not Guidance like a totem, but like... some actual guidance. What am I supposed to do with something like that?" He sighed. "I mean, how am I supposed to guide people when _I'm_ the one that needs guidance?"

Tanana nodded in sympathy as he talked. "The spirits often challenge us to grow in directions where it's hardest," Tanana said. "But I will tell you, Sitka, you don't always have to know the terrain in order to be someone's guide through it. Sometimes it's fine to make a map as you go. It's a bit late in the day, but come back tomorrow morning, and I'll show you something that might help you."

Sitka did as she instructed and showed up at Tanana's hut shortly after dawn, after he had left Denahi and Kenai in the care of an older couple.

"Ready?" Tanana asked. "It's quite the hike."

It was as she promised, a steep climb into the hills that took half the morning.

"I think it should be nearby... Ah, there!" She pointed to a tree growing out of the mountainside. The base of the tree was on a ledge nearly twenty feet beneath them, but it grew tall and they had a good view of its branches.

Sitka peered at the tree and saw what Tanana wanted to show him—an eyrie nestled high in the branches, and an eaglet perched on a nearby branch.

"Ooh, it's very exciting—that little one has been learning to fly for the past two weeks."

The eagle hopped from one tree to another, short bursts of flight with strong flaps of its wings to gain enough height to land on higher branches, sometimes gracefully, sometimes unsteadily on smaller branches that bent more in the breeze. "Little one" Tanana had called it, but its wings were already broader than Sitka's outstretched arms.

"She's still learning. See how she tests out her wings? Oh—there she goes!"

Tanana and Sitka watched as the eaglet bounded from the branch and took to the open air, the strong mountain winds ruffling her feathers in a way that made the bird dip momentarily before her wings caught the air the right way and she began to ascend. The two of them watched as she receded into the distance until she was just a brown blur.

"Some things she can learn by watching. Maybe her parents tell her things too—who knows? But when it comes to flying—and fishing and all the rest—there's no better teacher than just doing it. Parenting is the same way. No one _knows_ how to be a mother or a father until they are one, not even your parents, Sitka. They learned along the way."

Sitka watched the eaglet curve around in a broad circle and land on a tree on one side of the valley, and he thought about what Tanana had said yesterday and today. "So in order to guide... I have to go out and learn?"

Tanana just looked at him and smiled.

Or maybe it was the other way around, and guiding was something that he would have to learn on his own. In any case, Sitka felt a bit less daunted by the task in front of him. He didn't know yet what he would have to do, but somehow that felt good enough now. "Thanks, Tanana."

With a nod, she turned and started back down the mountain, and Sitka went with her.

* * *

"For generations beyond memory, for hundreds and thousands of men and women, the great spirits have granted a totem to each of us to guide us through life and from childhood into adulthood. Now there is one today who will receive the gift of their guidance. Denahi—"

Sitka let out a loud whoop.

Both Tanana and Denahi shot him a glare, half amused, half chastising.

"Denahi," Tanana continued, motioning him over.

As she daubed paint on Denahi's face, Sitka sat back, leaning on his palms, a wave of calm contentment washing over him. He had waited for this day so long—the day when one of his brothers also reached the age of adulthood. Now he could say he had finally fulfilled the important role that life had thrust upon him seven years ago—to raise his brothers in his parents' stead. Now they were on the threshold of their adult life, ready to run on their own two feet.

Tanana held out the small figure. "Your totem is Wisdom."

Sitka was jolted out of his thoughts at Tanana's pronouncement. _Wisdom?_ Unbidden, he remembered something that had happened just yesterday—Denahi had come over to Sitka with several bleeding cuts on his face and Kenai at his side in uncontrollable hysterics. As far as he could tell from Kenai's disjointed account told in between guffaws, Denahi had gotten in some kind of fight with a squirrel over a nut and had ended up getting some furious scratches for his trouble.

Later that day, when a couple of girls had asked about the injuries, though, somehow the story had changed to feature a "wolverine" instead of a squirrel and a fight over a "knife" instead of a nut.

Sitka also recalled what Tanana had once said to him, about the Great Spirits challenging people to grow in directions that were hardest. With a sigh, he decided that maybe his blockhead brothers would need his guidance for a little bit longer, after all.


End file.
